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Dough difficult to stretch

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  • Dough difficult to stretch

    Grandson’s birthday and first real pizza party.

    Mixed Italian pizza flour (have to check on make and edit later to include that) with water, salt and yeast as per the standard pizza recipe:

    500 grams Caputo Tipo 00 pizza flour
    325 grams water (65% hydration)
    10 grams salt
    3 grams active dry yeast


    I actually changed that slightly to 12g of salt and as I was going to put the dough in the fridge for 48 hours I used 4g of dried yeast (and a couple of batches went to 5g). The water was slightly warm and I started the yeast with about 100g of the water and a half teaspoon of sugar. When that was frothy, it was all mixed together until the water had been absorbed, then I let it sit for a few minutes.

    Then kneaded the dough for about 10 minutes until it felt smooth and reasonably silky. I lightly oiled a plastic container with some olive oil and put the dough in, lid on and into the fridge. Did 6 of these. This was Thursday evening.

    Friday morning and the dough is trying to get out of the containers and in some cases has succeeded. Knocked them back down and back into the fridge. Had to do the same thing that evening.

    Saturday evening and the dough is still rising dramatically. Take each batch, roll into a sausage shape and cut into 6. Make dough balls, roll them in flour, put back into the container and back into the fridge again.

    Sunday morning and these little suckers are still full of life. Some containers are not 6 balls anymore but one mass of dough. In the afternoon we start making the pizzas. Tear chunks off the mass from each container. It feels quite sticky but a littler flour makes it manageable. The problem is getting it to stretch. I’d made the same amounts before (but slightly less yeast and only 24 hours in the fridge) and it was quite easy to get a decent size pizza from each ball. But these were fighting me all the way and most of the pizzas ended up a little thicker than I would have liked.

    They had plenty of time to rest out of the fridge before we started so I’m wondering if the difference was the type of flour or the slightly increased amount of yeast. I mean, these guys wanted to rise and a five degree temperature wasn’t going to stop them. Some dough I had left over made great focaccia on the Monday – really light and plenty of flavour.

    More kneading? Less handling? Less yeast? I guess I should change one variable at a time to see what difference that makes and next time I will. But if anyone has any ideas..?
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